Certain South African farmers, specifically those upon whom the primitive racial epithet of whiteness is still being foisted, might have been feeling so chuffed at being in demand by politicians that they would have thrown an extra coil of boerie on the coals.
Which should give them cause to pause before firing off that e-mail to Australia’s minister in charge of immigration, Peter Dutton, to claim a fast-tracked humanitarian visa; a barbie is not a braai. Still, there might be other considerations that have less to do with the attractions of life in the arid Outback, such as being afraid for their lives.
The trouble, as usual, is race. Dutton pressed everyone’s button when he said "persecuted white farmers" should be accommodated as refugees. If he had left out "white" all would have been well, and there might even have been a chorus of black farmers agreeing with the persecution part. Instead, he got Australia’s Greens party leader Richard Di Natale calling him "an out-and-out racist".
Most of the fertile land that matters in agriculture is already owned by black farmers or in their possession through the right to occupy, or under lease from the state, or in the hands of an unelected monarch
That may or may not be accurate, depending on the facts. South Africans are familiar with being called racist and they know there is no defence against it. All they know for a fact is that if someone experiences a statement as racist, the assumption immediately gains credibility in fact-free postmodernism. Just try to tell someone that some of your best friends are Vulcan.
Di Natale’s truth is in the same league as that of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania which, in a missive to the world and beyond, declared on Friday that the party was not worried at all by Dutton. Moreover, it invited him to come "collect all his fellow racists who feel that they cannot live together with ‘normal’ people and go live where they are accepted in that unbecoming society".
It is in the same league as the exercise in data manipulation that passes for a government land audit on which the ANC, EFF and other running dogs base their policy position on land expropriation without compensation. This 2017 report puts individually owned farm land at 72% for whites and 4% for blacks, though it accounts only for land registered under freehold title, a privilege the ANC has been denying black land-reform beneficiaries for decades. And now new (unverified) government data show that white ownership by hectarage may be as low 22%.
The 50-percentage-point discrepancy might also be wrong, but it is a fact that not all land is the same. Most of the fertile land that matters in agriculture is already owned by black farmers or in their possession through the right to occupy, or under lease from the state, or in the hands of an unelected monarch.
The nation may never get to know the truth about land, just as facts about farm attacks are being obfuscated. Police statistics do not account for race, lobby group AfriForum’s data implies race, but includes smallholdings and unfarmed land, and farmers’ union TAU includes race, but excludes unfarmed land. This is the mess into which International Relations and Co-operation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu put her diplomatic hissy fit. "There is no reason for any government in the world to suspect that a section of South Africans is under danger from their own democratically elected government," she said soon after her department declared that the government was offended by Dutton’s statement.
Offended, no less. The fact is, two things threaten all 56-million South Africans: expropriation without compensation and violent crime. Under the proposed constitutional changes, orderly or otherwise, all citizens stand to lose their right to accumulate and transfer wealth.
In unfarmed suburbia citizens fear criminal gangs in the government and at traffic lights, and they fear state hospitals and schools and water crises and dying in train smashes and queuing for their state pensions that shrink at the same rate as the economy.
The fact is, politicians dine out on racial-identity politics and, for as long as citizens let them organise the world in this way, nothing will change. Racist or not, Dutton’s sentiments are likely to fall on receptive ears. Whether it is a good thing to turn the Outback into a mielieland is another matter.
• Blom is flyfisher who likes to write.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.